Reputation.com Inc., a well-funded startup that helps companies measure and improve customer sentiment around their brands, has acquired analytics startup Nuvi Inc. to broaden its software capabilities. 

Reputation announced the deal today without disclosing financial terms. The transaction comes in a time when customer analytics technology is drawing increasing interest from brands and venture capitalists.

Redwood City, California-based Reputation is backed by more than $100 million in funding from investors such as Bessemer Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. It provides a set of cloud-based tools that enable companies to assess customer sentiment by sending surveys to users. Reputation also offers related products for extracting customer sentiment data from online business reviews and social media posts.

The startup is acquiring Nuvi to strengthen its capabilities in the latter area. Lehi, Utah-based Nuvi has developed an artificial intelligence service that allows marketing teams to scan social media for brand mentions. The service’s machine learning models turn the raw mention data into dashboards that marketers can use to measure customer attitudes towards advertising campaigns and new products.

Nuvi also allows organizations to look beyond their own customer bases. The service can be used to monitor the popularity of competitors and track emerging market trends that might create new advertising opportunities.

According to Reputation, the acquisition will enable brands to gain a more complete picture of their online reputation by combining customer feedback gathered via its existing survey tools with social media data provided by Nuvi. Moreover, the company says, Nuvi’s visualization features will make it easier to work with that data. The service enables marketers to break down sentiment by user segment to help them determine how best to prioritize customer engagement efforts.

In addition to absorbing Nuvi’s technology, Reputation is hiring its employees. “Reputation is gaining an experienced team of engineers and leaders who understand how to help businesses drive impactful customer interactions across all social media channels,” said Nuvi Chief Executive Officer Michael Mullarkey. Reputation will turn the company into its “foundational research and development office in Utah,” which it plans to expand by hiring additional staffers.

Customer sentiment analytics is one segment of the broader customer experience software market, which has been drawing significant amounts of funding lately. The continued growth of e-commerce is driving brands to spend more on technologies that can help them better engage online shoppers, which is in turn boosting investor interest around startups focused on this area.

Quantum Metric Inc., which helps brands collect data on how they can improve their websites and mobile apps, raised $200 million at a more than $1 billion valuation in January. Decibel Insight Ltd., a startup applying AI to the same task, earlier closed a $40 million funding round. 

Photo: Nuvi